This colloquium to be held at FRIAS,
Freiburg (Germany), seeks to bring together researchers working on
different language constellations who share an interest in the
linguistic and sociolinguistic description of the emergence of
bilingually or multilingually mixed language structures ("fused lects")
from language mixing. The idea that fused lects such as mixed languages
arise from language mixing is not new (see Myers-Scotton 1998; Auer
1999; Thomason 2001). It is supported not only by the plenteous
structural similarities between fused lects and language mixing but also
by well-documented historical facts (McConvell and Meaking 2003;
O'Shannessy 2012; Schaengold 2004). Fusion is thus a process whereby
certain bilingual mixing patterns become regularized, conventionalized
and grammaticalized in specific communities. To provide a better
understanding of how fused lects emerge, we need not only consider the
sociolinguistic factors facilitating extensive fusion but also
scrutinize intermediate stages of fusion, such as partial fusion (Auer
2014).